


Kid Fears

by ShastaFirecracker



Category: The Authority
Genre: Bodysharing, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, century children, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 05:30:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3107888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShastaFirecracker/pseuds/ShastaFirecracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a part of Jenny that sometimes fills the quiet time just before she goes to sleep with curses and rage. When she hears a voice come out of her that is not her voice... she knows that it is the Other Her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kid Fears

**Author's Note:**

> Set during Revolution. Character study of Jenny Quantum as a young child between the time Midnighter leaves and the time Jenny force-ages herself into a teenager.

_“Pain from pearls - hey, little girl. How much have you grown?  
Pain from pearls - hey, little girl. Flowers for the ones you've known.”_

\---

There is a part of Jenny that sometimes fills the quiet time just before she goes to sleep with curses and rage. When she feels a pang of craving she cannot identify, or when she knows the meaning of a word before she's ever heard it, or when she idly dreams of being inside a naked body with a fine down of blonde hair, hands brushing her electrified skin, or... when she hears a voice come out of her that is not her voice, she knows that it is the Other Her.

In some ways her childhood is normal, including the transience and fallibility of memory. Her first toddling steps, her first words, hugs from her fathers, rides on Aunt Angie's shoulders, flying shrieking with laughter around the room with Shen: these things fade almost at once into a mist of vague happiness. They exist alongside other memories and emotions, often older and sharper than her own, often contradictory.

The rumble of stone in her bones. Smoky fire in a dim cave, lungs full of pungent heat. The battering ram rush of a river, _the_ river, when she was the power of water washing silt over the land, imposing order on growth. The steam that scalds her fingertips and stings her eyes and leaves her covered in a cooling crystalline matrix of water droplets. Smoke that smells sweet, makes her cough, the feel of the dense white paper stick rolling between her fingers, a comfort. The stomach-in-her-mouth rush of falling, falling out of a plane – weightlessness, space... Electric wire nerves, humming. These are strongest, the memories of the all-consuming hum, the song of bringing light to the darkness, the song of abolishing day and night.

She knows who they are, the Other Her. They are ancient and they are strong. They make her feel small and stupid and lost. And they are waiting, impatiently, for her to grow up.

\---

“You've got to eat something, sweetheart,” said Apollo.

Jenny stabbed a piece of broccoli with all the savageness she could muster. Her fork went through the bottom of the paper Chinese container and lodged deep in the wood grain of the dining room table. She let go of the fork handle and crossed her arms.

“Don't,” she said, glaring at her lap.

Apollo sighed. “Jenny...”

“I don't _have_ to eat. You don't either. I don't know why we pretend.”

Apollo, who had also spent the last fifteen minutes pushing rice around without eating, leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms to mirror his daughter, and looked at her. She raised her eyes so that she was glaring at him, head still lowered. He pursed his lips and kept staring.

It made her fidget. She shifted her weight around, looking down and then back up again – until finally she raised her head and demanded, _“What?”_

He let out a long breath. “I know you're angry -” he began.

“Why aren't _you?_ ” she yelled. Something inside her felt rigid and brittle. Every second Apollo looked at her, it splintered a little more. She _couldn't_ let it break. Her eyes seared and blurred and it made her more angry and she pounded her fists against reality until the tears sizzled off her cheeks into steam. _“Why aren't you angry?_ Why didn't you _do_ anything? Why did you let him –”

But the sizzle faded almost at once; the heat in her face was just heat. A tear ran down her chin and under the collar of her t-shirt. She scrubbed her shirt across her chest, up over her face and nose to wipe away the evidence, and once her face was hidden she couldn't bear to show it again.

She heard her father push back his chair and come to her. She wanted to be angry – she wanted to be screaming with rage, she wanted to be a great big monster that could rip at the Earth with its claws until it spat out her _real_ life that it had tried to swallow up. But that life was gone. Gone through the Door with her daddy. She – she hated him for leaving – she wanted to hurt him – she wanted –

Jenny let her t-shirt fall, put her arms around her dad's neck and sobbed.

She wanted him to come home.

\---

Jenny thinks that the Other Her knows things it isn't telling. She tosses and turns for sleepless nights burning with the certainty that if she could just listen with the right parts of her ears, she would hear them talking with each other, and they would answer all her questions.

She feels certain that the Other Her understands why Midnighter left. Some of the Other Her fan the fires of her anger; others throw buckets of shame and guilt on the blaze. Some of them seize her with a wave of haughty disdain, informing her that men are pigs; some of them leave her feeling temporarily possessed of a detached, loveless sympathy. Both of these feelings she despises, the first because it leaves her feeling sick and defensive, the latter because it feels so alien and insincere.

The Other Her never agree on anything. All Jenny knows is that the battle to sort out her own feelings from the other presences is exhausting. She is long past anger, and she can see that Apollo has been worrying himself sick over her sleepless, bruised eyes and increasing tendency to drift about the house, staring at the doors.

\---

Until, in the nighttime after she's cried herself into a stupor against her father's shoulder, tossing sleepless in bed, trying to block out the steady stream of internal conversation and emotional gibberish – then, at the precipice of her sanity, at her breaking point, _one_ voice rises above all the others. It rings sharp and clear, demanding, _commanding,_ and the others – the others simply...

\---

_Stop,_ she thinks to herself, two nights later. _Stop, it's too quiet, please._

She pulls the pillow over her head and tries so hard not to hear the angry sobs her dad can't completely stifle.

Her room is dark. Her father is two rooms away, and she shouldn't be able to hear him. But ever since the voices in her head obeyed Her command, she has been dizzy with silence. The blood running through her wrists is a volcano against her ears. She holds her hands to her head, listening to the rumble. She can almost not hear her dad's pain.

But her stomach twists and sinks and she takes her hands away from her ears to listen. Now she knows that he _is_ angry. She knew it... really, she knew it already, but it was easier for her to be angry for both of them.

She can't do it anymore. She's cried out all her tears and she's ripped out Midnighter's heart a million times in her head because it's what he did to them. And isn't that how daddy does it? Play it over and over again. Find all the flaws. Plan every movement. See the future.

Why didn't he see the flaws this time? What if he had known, and left anyway? Did he see, in his mind's eye, Jenny and Apollo lonely and in pain? And how could he stay away, if he did?

Jenny rolls out of bed. Dry eyes – but a headache is building behind them. She feels dull and muted and intensely alone inside her own head.

She pads out the door and down the hall. Dad's eyes are red, open, staring unseeing at the wall. His back is to the empty side of the bed.

He notices her with a start and rises to one elbow. “Jenny?”

“Can't sleep,” she says, relieving him of an apology for waking her, giving him a problem he can solve, and he doesn't need to know she's doing it for him.

He gives her a sad half-smile, but she can see he's trying, and he scoots back and she climbs into the bed and hugs him and tries not to think of when she had had night terrors about killing people and Midnighter had held her and he had said _nothing will ever hurt you when we're around._

_Nothing will hurt me,_ she thought. _You can't hurt me. Not even you._

She can feel Dad relaxing, his hand brushing her hair. She takes a long breath and understands, calm in her enlightenment, the value of giving control to someone who feels they have none. At the same time she understands that she is the one in control.

_Good girl,_ says the Other Her, and lights play behind Jenny's eyelids like a lit sparkler before fading into darkness.


End file.
